How To Shrink Scanned Novel Pdf Files Effectively?

I've dealt with this issue a lot since I love collecting digital copies of old manga and light novels. The easiest way to shrink a scanned PDF is to use online tools like Smallpdf or ILovePDF—just upload, compress, and download. But if you want more control, try Adobe Acrobat's 'Reduce File Size' option under the 'File' menu. It keeps the quality decent while cutting down the size. For scanned novels, lowering the DPI (dots per inch) to 150-200 works well; anything higher is overkill for text. Also, OCR (optical character recognition) tools like Abbyy FineReader can convert scans to searchable text, which often reduces file size significantly.

Another trick is to split the PDF into smaller chunks if the file is massive. Tools like PDFsam make this simple. If you’re tech-savvy, command-line tools like Ghostscript (gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf) work wonders for batch processing. Just avoid the '/screen' preset—it murders image quality.

As someone who runs a small Discord server for novel collectors, I’ve experimented with tons of methods to optimize scanned PDFs. The biggest mistake people make is not prepping scans before conversion. If your PDF is a pile of image scans, use a tool like 'ScanTailor Advanced' to clean up noise, straighten pages, and binarize text (convert to black-and-white). This alone can cut file size by 50% without losing readability. For manga or illustrated novels, stick to grayscale instead of full color—JPEG compression at 70% quality is a sweet spot.

For software, free options like 'PDF24 Creator' offer advanced compression settings. Choose 'MRC compression' if your novel has mixed text and images; it smartly compresses backgrounds separately. If you’re on Mac, 'Preview’s export function' (File > Export as PDF) has a Quartz Filter called 'Reduce File Size' that’s surprisingly effective. For batch processing, 'Briss' lets you crop margins, which can shave off another 10-20%.

Pro tip: Avoid online tools for sensitive content—privacy matters. Local tools like 'Caesium' for image pre-compression or 'PDFtk' for metadata stripping are safer. If you archive novels, consider splitting into volumes and compressing them into CBZ/CBR formats; they often outperform PDFs in size and readability for sequential art.

I’m a broke college student who scans library books to save money, so file size is critical for my cheap tablet. Here’s my dirt-cheap workflow: First, I use 'CamScanner' (free version) to scan pages as JPEGs, then run them through 'TinyPNG' for basic compression. For PDF conversion, 'LibreOffice Draw' lets me import images and export as PDF with adjustable quality. It’s clunky but free. If the novel is text-heavy, I’ll use 'Google Drive’s OCR' (upload PDF > Open with Google Docs) to convert it to editable text, then save as a new PDF—cuts size by 80% sometimes.

For ancient light novels with yellowed pages, I fix contrast using 'GIMP' (Filters > Enhance > Unsharp Mask) before PDF conversion. Darkening text improves OCR accuracy too. If you’re on Linux, 'OCRFeeder' is a godsend. For Windows folks, 'XnViewMP' can batch-resize scans before assembling them with 'PDFill'. Bonus: Rename files sequentially (page_001.jpg, page_002.jpg) so tools auto-sort them correctly. Avoid TIFF scans—they’re space hogs.